On Double Creek

I was born on Double Creek, on a forty-acre hill;

North was the Buckalew Ridge, south at our land’s end

The county poor farm with hungry fields

And furrows as crooked as an adder’s track.

Across the creek I saw the paupers plowing.

I can remember their plodding in the furrows,

Their palsied hands, the worn flesh of their faces,

And their odd shapelessness, and their tired cries.

I can remember the dark swift martins in their eyes.